Celebrating Holiday Cookies with Dan Pelosi

‘Tis the season to bake as many cookies as you can!

We kick off the show by unveiling King Arthur’s 2025 holiday cookie lineup before being joined by Dan Pelosi, a baker known for his annual holiday cookie party. He chats with Jessica about the keys to successfully throwing a cookie party, including his holiday cookie philosophy, then David and Jessica answer your burning baking questions with their advice for avoiding cakey cookies and making cutout cookies that actually keep their shape. In this week’s Jess-opinion, Jessica gives her thoughts on the controversial inclusion of chocolate chip cookies in the holiday cookie landscape, and we close the show with the best cookies she and David are baking this season.

Introducing our 2025 holiday cookie platter

Find our list of all the classic holiday and Christmas cookies you should bake

Level up your cookies with our scoop set

Learn more about Dan and his recent cookbook, Let’s Party, on his website

Blog: Why you should always bake a few test cookies

Find our Soft Frosted Sugar Cookies recipe

We like decorating with this Simple Cookie Glaze

What David’s baking this week: Rugelach and Piped Vanilla Shortbread Cookies

What Jessica’s baking this week: Whipped Lemon Shortbread

Record your question for our Ask the Bakers segment here!

This episode is sponsored by Plugra. Learn more about their premium European-style butter at plugra.com.

We have a very special episode today. Ahead of the busiest baking season of the year, we’ve got an entire show dedicated to answering your biggest holiday baking questions! And we’ve invited some friends to help us. We’ve assembled an all-star collection of our King Arthur colleagues, including Molly Marzalek-Kelly and Sarah Jampel from our Test Kitchen, Amber Eisler from our Baking School, Martin Philip from our YouTube channel, and Melanie Wanders from our R&D team. Together, we tackle pressing questions like how to make holiday cookies ahead of time, what to do if your cream puffs keep deflating, and the best way to make whole grain dinner rolls that are still light and fluffy. Let’s get baking!

Take Mel’s Cookie Decorating Essentials On Demand class

Find Martin (and more King Arthur bakers!) on our YouTube channel

Record your question for our Ask the Bakers segment here!

This episode is sponsored by Plugra. Learn more about their premium European-style butter at plugra.com.

The recipes mentioned in this episode include:

Latke Focaccia recipe

Everyday Olive Oil Cake recipe

Gingerbread Biscotti recipe

Fluffy Frosted Orange Rolls recipe

Buckwheat-Cardamom Chocolate Chunk Cookies recipe

Olive Oil Sufganiyot recipe

Jelly Doughnut Cake recipe

Chocolate Bûche de Noël with Cookie Butter Whipped Ganache recipe

It’s high time for pie, and we couldn’t be more excited!

David and Jessica kick off the show by sharing some of their best pie tips and tricks, before bringing in a real pie expert — Stacey Mei Yan Fong, author of the award-winning cookbook 50 Pies, 50 States — to offer her advice. We’ve got some great Thanksgiving pie questions to answer, from the best way to prebake your crust to advice for preventing a runny apple pie filling, before closing the show with a Jess-opinion about the other dessert you should make for Thanksgiving and the pies Jessica and David are making this year.

Read David’s article: How My Brother-in-Law Stole Thanksgiving—and How I Got it Back

Find our Pies On-Demand Baking Class

Check out all our pie resources: How to Bake Pie

Learn more about Stacey and her book, and tune in to her Instagram page for her virtual pie hotline

Find everything you need for your holiday pies in our Pie shop

Mix it up this year with Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie

Read PJ’s blog about baking pie crust upside down

Find our Pie Thickener chart

What David’s baking this week: Cranberry Chiffon Pie

What Jessica’s baking this week: Classic Apple Tarte Tatin

Record your question for our Ask the Bakers segment here!

This episode is sponsored by Plugra. Learn more about their premium European-style butter at plugra.com.

Today, we’re talking about one of the world’s perfect foods: chocolate.

And who better to join us than Amy Guittard of Guittard Chocolate? For her, chocolate literally runs in the family. She explains everything from how chocolate is made to what the percentages on the bag really mean. Then David and Jessica answer this week’s listener questions, sharing their tips for better brownies and choosing cocoas. To close out the show, Jessica is back with this week’s Jess-opinion, in which she finally addresses the elephant in the room: white chocolate. And of course, she and David share the recipes they’re baking this week!

Find our (surprisingly easy!) Rich Chocolate Mousse recipe

Learn more about Guittard chocolate

Find all of our chocolate and cocoa in our Shop (including Guittard!)

On the blog: Types of cocoa, explained

Also on the blog: How to make brownies with shiny crust (or just bake our Fudge Brownies)

Learn more about tempering: A basic guide to tempering chocolate

What David’s baking this week: Fugazzeta

What Jessica’s baking this week: Jalapeño-Cheddar Pull-Apart Bread

Record your question for our Ask the Bakers segment here!

This episode is sponsored by Plugra. Learn more about their premium European-style butter at plugra.com.

We’re going gluten-free this week and talking about how to make the best gluten-free bread — because we believe everyone deserves great bread.

Aran Goyoaga, author of the stunning new book The Art of Gluten-Free Bread, joins us to talk about her approach to gluten-free bread baking, including some of her favorite flours and tips and tricks. We break down the dizzying world of gluten-free flours, our tips for making gluten-free sourdough, and the differences between gluten-full and gluten-free bread doughs. And as always, we close out the show with Jessica’s Jess-opinion of the week and the (gluten-free!) recipes she and David are baking.

Recipes and other links from this episode:

Find Aran’s book: The Art of Gluten-Free Bread

Learn more about gluten-free flours: Which gluten-free flour should I use?

Read: How to substitute Gluten-Free Bread Flour for regular flour

What David’s baking this week: Gluten-Free Chocolate Mousse Cake with Raspberries

What Jessica’s baking this week: Sunken Berry Almond Cake

Record your question for our Ask the Bakers segment here!

This episode is sponsored by Plugra. Learn more about their premium European-style butter at plugra.com.

Give kids a baked good, and you’ve fed them for a day. Teach kids to bake, and well ... you know.

We’ve been thinking a lot about baking with kids, because we’ve been hard at work writing a brand-new kids baking cookbook! And despite the mess and the chaos, we think it’s all worth it. So does cookbook author Samantha Seneviratne, who joins the show to chat with Jessica about baking with her adorable son Artie and the advice she has for anyone spending time in the kitchen with a young one. Then we have a very special edition of Ask the Bakers, featuring all questions from kids. (And boy, they’re some good ones.) Jessica shares a Jess-opinion all about the state of the restaurant kid’s menu, and we close out the show with the recipes she and David are baking this week.

Recipes and other links from this episode:

Find our new kids’ cookbook: Sweet & Salty!

Learn more about Sam and her cookbooks here, and bake Sam’s Maple Tahini Chocolate Skillet Cake and Sunken Berry Almond Cake

Learn more about leaveners: What's the difference between baking soda and baking powder?

What David’s baking this week: Easiest Sourdough Discard Crackers

What Jessica’s baking this week: Crispy Cheesy Pan Pizza

Record your question for our Ask the Bakers segment here!

This episode is sponsored by Plugra. Learn more about their premium European-style butter at plugra.com.

It’s the best baking season of the year! So we’re celebrating all things fall baking on today’s episode.

First up, producer Rossi Anastopoulo and King Arthur editor Tatiana Bautista join David and Jessica to discuss our new list of the 49 Best Fall Recipes, Ranked. To no one’s surprise, there are a lot of opinions all around! Then cookbook author Rick Martínez stops by to dive deep into Pan de Muerto, the fragrant, buttery bread made to celebrate the fall holiday of Día de los Muertos. During our Ask the Bakers segment, Jessica and David discuss the big fall baking questions: Is it ever worth it to make your own pumpkin purée? What’s the difference between all the cinnamons out there? And is it pronounced PEA-can or puh-CON?! To close the show, we have a story about the oldest apple tree in America and the apple detective who found it (!), a freshly fried Jess-opinion, and the bakes David and Jessica are making this week.

Recipes and other links from this episode:

Get baking with our 49 Best Fall Recipes, Ranked

Our favorite fall recipes: Chili Crisp Cottage Cheese Flatbreads (Tatiana), Sweet Potato Sheet Cake with Marshmallow Frosting (Rossi), Honey Beer Miche (David), and Oatmeal-Date Smash Cookies (Jessica)

Check out our Pan de Muerto recipe

Find Rick’s cookbooks and learn more about his work here

Visit our shop for Vietnamese cinnamon and Indonesian cinnamon

Read more about John Bunker’s apple discovery: On a Maine island, historians discover one of the oldest living apple trees in North America and find his book here

Find our recipe for Fried Apple Pies

What David’s baking this week: Cinnamon-Crisp Coffee Cake

What Jessica’s baking this week: recipes from Sweet & Salty, our new kids’ cookbook!

Record your question for our Ask the Bakers segment here!

This episode is sponsored by Plugra. Learn more about their premium European-style butter at plugra.com.

We’re talking about one of our favorite genres of baking today: the bakes of Chinatown.

From bolo bao to dan tat, we can’t get enough of the gorgeous goods lining the bakery cases of Chinatowns across the US. So of course, we had to have cookbook author Kristina Cho on the show to share more about the history of these bakeries, their place in Chinese American communities, and her tips for making the best versions of these iconic bakes at home. Along the way, David and Jessica share their experiences eating in two of the best Chinatowns in the country, plus their answers to your biggest baking questions (with some crucial help from Kristina!). Jessica has a shockingly positive Jess-opinion for once, and she and David close out the show by sharing the recipes they’re baking this week.

Recipes and other links from this episode:

Find our recipes for Pineapple Buns (Bolo Bao), Hong Kong Egg Tarts, and Red Bean Mooncakes

Learn more about Kristina’s two cookbooks, Mooncakes & Milk Bread and Chinese Enough

For more on steamed buns, check out our blog: Everything you need to know to make steamed buns

Find our Golden Milk Bread recipe in the Big Book of Bread

And for more on tangzhong and milk bread, see our blog: What is milk bread?

What David’s baking this week: Bagels (with help from our On-Demand Bagel Class)

What Jessica’s baking this week: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Record your question for our Ask the Bakers segment here!

This episode is sponsored by Plugra. Learn more about their premium European-style butter at plugra.com.